Tembisa

On Saturday, 14 June, I rose early to be picked up for a visit to Tembisa.

Tembisa is a township here in Johannesburg, which means it was a designated area for blacks under Apartheid. No whites were allowed to live there, just as no blacks were allowed to live in the white areas. The result is the lack of infrastructure- streets are an adventure, electricity is unreliable, running water is questionable- and ridiculously high population density. The blacks were given very little land, and all of the best land was cleared of blacks and given to whites.

In Tembisa there is a woman named Flora who runs Good Hope Center. Flora is building an orphanage and runs a day school, but most of her efforts so far have been HIV/AIDS care. She makes home visits throughout the township and has boarders stay with her. It is essentially hospice care.

Flora is amazing. She started Good Hope Center at a time when her community was in sharp denial about the impact and consequences of HIV/AIDS. As a matter of fact, the community and most people in Sub-Saharan Africa are still in denial, buying into myths such as having sex with a virgin can cure you (leading to rape) or eating a potato-type food can make you immune. Even Flora, who has been working this for years, mentioned HIV/AIDS only twice in a 30 minute conversation on the subject, and instead used “positive” at least 10 times. She is constantly surrounded by death, and told us of a young man who came to her just the week before, but was so far along in the disease that he died within a few days.

You can imagine funerals as a weekly feature of life. They are held on Saturday and are family affairs. One is more than likely to meet new members of a family at a funeral, because culturally there will be a slaughtered bull (enough to feed 500 people) and home brewed beer. Thus they are on Saturdays so people can travel to the meal if necessary.

Through Flora, Trinity Presbyterian Church has adopted a child-headed household. Both parents died of HIV/AIDS more than two years ago, possibly as many as five, but I forget. The oldest child, Nomsa, is now 21, is HIV positive, and has two children. She recently acquired a job with the help of the church and has, according to the church members with me, improved leaps and bounds since getting this job. The 19-year-old sister was not home, hopefully at work instead, but she also has a child. Finally, at 16 is Prudence, who is trying to finish school and does not have the disease. An alcoholic uncle makes frequent visits and within the last month built a shed in the backyard to live in, and an aunt dying of AIDS lives in one of the four rooms of the house. That leaves two other rooms and the kitchen, the toilet is outside in a shed.

We brought foodstuffs, curtains, and plastic containers to them. Cathy thought of the plastic containers to save the food from rats. Sure enough, as Cathy was teaching the girls to knit in the backyard, Leigh and I looked at the kitchen window and saw a rat crawling along the sill. We later found a nest living in the corner of the yard, but we had nothing with which to get them. We started to hang curtains but realized we lacked a necessary ladder. Then we discovered a roach infestation in the curtains that we already hanging.

Not everyone in the township lives this way. Across the street from the girls is a nice looking house with a garage and gate, just as if it were a neighbor’s house where I am staying. It is probably much smaller, since it is on a stamp-sized lot, but it is clearly nicer. Either way, the attitudes and ignorance about HIV/AIDS permeate the entire culture. We will be going back on 28 June to do some projects around the house, hopefully addressing the rat issue, hanging the curtains, repairing plaster, some electrical safety improvements, and other odd jobs that need doing.